Fall begins!

Well, it's been a busy September.  Birthdays, card parties, clean out the shed projects. Phew.  I thought I'd post some of my latest cards to share some of my crafty projects that have been keeping me sane.  :)

But first, here's one of Hel enjoying the last few sunny days of summer while I gather my thoughts...

OK, let's get back to cards...


September is the month we celebrate OWH's birthday because this is the month OWH was awarded Non-Profit status  in 2009.  So we have been having all kinds of fun on the OWH FB page, Sandy Allnock's blog and OWH TV on YouTube.  Our local group of friends have been having lots of fun with card making parties here in the Vancouver area too.

We started out on Labor Day, Sept. 2nd, with a party at East Woods Presbyterian Church, and made a great bunch of cards.  Then continuing the fun...we had a gathering the next day at Emeritus Senior Living.  At this meeting we helped a few residents decorate a Fall bulletin board for their center and had the use of tons of fun stuff provided by the center.  Esther then added pictures of the residents to it afterwards.  It turned out pretty nice.

(This is a pic of Mary and I at the last group meeting at Emeritus, but she had this same great smile on when we were crafting the bulletin board too.)

And Esther found a friend:

The following week, we had our evening gathering on the 10th (Happy Birthday Pete), at Ellen's house and put together kits.  Here are a couple I brought.  I'm slowly getting into Fall and Christmas cards...

Then we drove into Portland on the 14th for a party that was put on by a Portland card maker, Angel Koch.  She had arranged for us to use a meeting room at the Hollywood Branch of Multnomah County library and she had brought over 500 cards to be put together.  There were two young girls happily writing out Any Hero letters when we arrived.  They had wandered into the meeting room by mistake, but took to OWH like ducks to water.  They put together cards, then wrote out letters to the troops.  They were 11 and 12 years old, I believe Angel said, and they wrote jokes and nice notes and did a great job on the cards.  They were there for at least 2 hours!  Thank you Sharon and Ming Ma.  Such cuties.

We had such fun that I told Angel I would love for her to come with us on the following Monday at East Woods.   We were expecting, Sandy Allnock to join us and this would be a great opportunity for Angel to meet her face to face.  Angel wasn't going to have a way to get up to Vancouver, so I told her I'd drive down and pick her up.  She lives just across the river and it was no problem going to get her.   The more the merrier, right?

 Our OWH Fearless Leader, Sandy Allnock, drove down from Federal Way, WA so this was a very special group meeting.  Woo Hoo!  We had cookies and brownies, door prizes, and lots of card kits to put together.  And Sandy took some video that she then incorporated into her OWH TV show.  We had a blast.

We always have door prizes at some point during our meetings, so to help with this Sandy brought down big zip lock bags of card stock, design paper, stickers and embellishments that had been parceled out into themes to contribute.  She had a Hugh Garage Sale last month and a lot of this stuff hadn't sold.  She figured we would put it to good use!  I brought home one stuffed with baseball/softball/sports type stuff and let me tell you, I will be able to make tons of cards with this stuff!  Thanks Sandy.



The following are some of the card kits I took to this group meeting:

CTMH - One of a Kind - Sentiment

Impression Obsession - birds on clothes line image "Hang in There" by Alesa Baker Designs

CS - stash

Baker's twine - hand stitched between the clothes pins and birds feet

 Brads - stash

There was a call on the blog and FB for more masculine cards, so I've done several sets of sports theme cards.  I have a stack of paper with sports stuff that I've been trying to work my way through.  And I am getting tired of the brown and red.  I will dig into that sports package of goodies Sandy provided as a door prize for next year as most of it is baseball theme.  Can't wait.

Sandy had asked us last month what kinds of cards men would pick to send to other men, so I've been trying to make some totally with out froo-froo things on them like lacy ribbons and cutesie things.  Hopefully, these cards will get chosen by some of the troops.

OWH Sketch #78

CTMH cream card stock

SU Soft Suede card stock (mat for tank strip)

A Fistful of Stamps - tank image (this is a great company for military and patriotic stamps)

All Night Media - "Many Tanks" sentiment stamp

Sentiment - CTMH Rustic Alphabet

DP - That great sports stack

Ribbon - May Arts

Kraft paper - stash

(Snap is a football term, right?)

Stampendous - Alphabet stamps

CS/DP - stash

CTMH - Pepperwood ink

Michael's - ribbon

Brads - stash

And here are some Christmasy/winter ones I've been making this month.  I still don't have the urge to make Christmas cards yet.  Sometimes the call for seasonal cards two months ahead of time finds me way behind schedule...or missing it altogether.  Maybe I should just stick with missing you and love you themes.  Safer that way.

I used my Cuttle Bug to emboss the white background.

And some other general themes:

Sketch - variation of OWH B24

CS - stash

DP - K&I Memories - Glitter Paper - Birds

CTMH - Sentiment "One of a Kind" set

And, my favorite that I'm taking to the next group:

You may not be able to see it, but the white pieces are shiny.  I can't remember who gave me this paper, but I have a few precious pieces left.  I typed the sentiment on the flag.  Yes, I still have an honest to goodness manual typewriter.  The yellow card stock is really garishly bright yellow, but I think works great with the black and red.  The sentiment is CTMH from the Play It Safe set.  CTMH - Holiday Red ink.  And the Crime Scene tape is from Scotch Tape that I picked up from Powell's Book Store.  I HAD to have it.

I gave the first one to my sweetie as a belated birthday card.  I got a kiss.